The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A Episode 335 with Frederick Dunn Winter is Here

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

Audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/t_U6pifOIKE

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Happy Friday. Today is Friday, December the 5th of 2025. This is backyard beekeeping questions and answers episode number 335. I'm Frederick Dunn and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here. Thanks for joining me. December's off to a good start here and our opening temperatures are really really bad. We'll get to that in a second. If you want to know what we're going to talk about today please look down in the video description you'll see all the topics listed in order. and below that you will see links related to some of the things that we talk about today so you can do a deeper dive if you want to.

If you've got something on your mind and you just need to talk to somebody right away about your bees and you want to show a picture, share a video sequence or something like that, join the Way to Be Fellowship. It's on Facebook. The other thing is maybe you're driving somewhere or you're doing some work. You're driving your snowplow right now. I don't want you to wreck it. So this is available as a podcast. That's right.

You can do a Google search for The Way to be podcast. And then you just listen to it while you drive places. You won't wreck your car. So I think that's pretty good. All the topics we're going to talk about today. We're submitted during the past week, as recent as this morning. So that's pretty good response time. And I know what you want to know because you want to know what's going on outside because the weather's dynamic.

Check this out. minus 6.2 degrees Fahrenheit. That's minus 21 Celsius. So it's a popsicle cold out there. And we had the largest moon. So, and the highest, they say, the highest in the sky. So it really lit up the landscape because of all the snow that we've got out there. And it's windy too. How windy? How windy? 2.5 miles per hour, which is 4 kilometers per hour. And for the sailors out there, that's 2.1 knots. It's 89 relative humidity. So it's actually pretty humid, considering how cold it is. And we have accumulated 11 inches of snow, which is not a lot for my area, but it's not nothing. Combine that with the cold temperatures, and we have travel restrictions sometimes on the corridor through here.

And I know what you want to know, too, is it going to get warmer in the days ahead? How about in the next seven days? What is the high temp going to be right here in northeastern part of the United States, northwestern part, the state of Pennsylvania? What do you think the high is going to be? That's right, 39 degrees Fahrenheit. That's as hot as it's going to get. So for those of you who miss your window of opportunity to treat with exhalic acid vaporization to knock out those dispersal phase, Varroa destructor mites. It's too cold now to do that.

So it's too late. Sorry, you didn't do what you could. Well, you could. And the opening sequences, of course, there's no bees in there. This is the birds coming to the feeder. And so the environment around here needs a lot of wild birds, because we want them to take out a lot of pests, by the way, and they do a great job of it.

And some of the species of birds that were shown, the tufted tit-mouse, for starters, the nut hatch, dark-eyed junkos, there's grass sparrows, there's purple finches, there's all kinds of stuff out there. And just my word to those who take care of backyard birds, if you start feeding, keep feeding. They become dependent upon what you put out there. There's also a Donnie Woodpecker.

So anyway, snow-covered hives, by the way, is that good or bad? If you have a foot of snow piled up on the top of your beehives and how about piled up against the side of your beehive, is that good? It is because snow is an insulator. So look at the temperature. I mean, minus 6.2. It's not that cold underneath all that snow. So it's a benefit to your bees.

So don't take that off, but snow-covered hive good, blocked entrance, bad. We need them to be able to ventilate. And I did walk around and look at the entrances to see how much snow is piled up against them. There's always that tiny gap there that air can flow through, and you might think that's adequate. But if you could just scoop out the opening a little bit and make sure that your bees can ventilate as they need, because my bees and my colonies do not have top ventilation, therefore they control how much air comes in or does not. By not circulating air out, they don't draw new air in. It's pretty interesting. so but if the entrance is blocked there's nothing they can do because what's going to happen

it'll melt and freeze over because it melts in the sun even when it's really cold what else do to do oh this is a great time to do thermal scans of your hives now the other thermal scans it doesn't matter if you're using the fleer system or if you've got some other surface reading temperature unit right um try not to do that during the day wait till after sunset wait till things cool out and sunsets early this time of year anyway you're reading surface temperature so if the sun is warming different surfaces it could give you a false reading that there might be something alive in your hive when it isn't and with these temps below freezing you can go out there and even the insulated hives have a mild heat signature so you know what do you know alive or dead that's it's what you know and so the things are alive around here

And just because we're just getting going here, there are sales online right now. So maybe shouldn't be watching this right now. Maybe you should be shopping because they carried out, it should have ended during Black Friday and Cyber Monday and all that stuff. But they've kept the sales going. So there are great opportunities with B equipment and everything else. Check that stuff out. Also check your emergency feed status. That's it.

Let's jump right into the very first question for today. which comes from Julie from no comus or no comus I probably messed that up Florida right here in the good old United States says I've tried to find information on this question but I've had unsuccessful searches anyway I had a hive with a 32 mite count a week ago 32 mites and at home and I couldn't do an 08 vaporization so I put veroxan strips in can I do a an OA vape now but I'm not sure if it's advisable with the strips in and I don't really want to take them out after only a week just wondering if you think it would be detrimental to do a vaporization while the strips are installed opinion thank you

so we should probably talk about what it is by the way varoxan and OA oxalic acid and so those are both methods of delivering oxalic acid to your hive. One's an extended release method. That's what the varoxan strips are. And so when you put those in there, it's long exposure release, low dose, long exposure, extended release. Once those are in there, they're in there. In other words, they're dosed and the, by that I mean the percentage of exhalic acid that's in there that your bees are going to be exposed to. And this has to be approved because it's a miticide. And there was some discussion last week about the dosing being increased, specifically at Better Bapibioxal.

So Dr. David Peck talked about that. And when I researched this particular question, by the way, today, Dr. Peck was one of the contributors to the research as well, and it's pretty darn new. So anyway, good news, bad news. Good news of Roxanne is probably still doing its thing. It's over the brood frames and stuff like that. And you've put it in for the extended period. and guess what we can't do now.

We can't do another delivery method of the same treatment. And by same treatment, I mean axelic acid. That's what's working. There are a lot of different delivery methods that are described, of course. You can do the dribble method. You can do the extended release now, of course, which is what varroxan is. And you can do the vaporization or sublimation,

which is exhalic acid vaporization. Most people just say OAV. Anyway, you can't do both. you're increasing the dose and the way they get these things approved i know it's a wild west out there for backyard beekeepers and a lot of people are just saying i just keep dumping it in there exhalic acid doesn't hurt anything i just keep doing it please don't please don't do everything you can integrated pest management wise and for me that means wintertime insulated inner cover no top venting

I'll get to my point on that. And treat when brood is low. Both of these have higher efficacy when brood is low. So, and then have a screen bottom board that is enclosed, that's key, with a removable tray. So that you can get the detritus out, collect those little varro mites that fall through the screen. And there was a very good article that came out in the American Bee Journal for November. about that very thing. Validating what I've been sharing with you for the longest time that you should have an enclosed screen bottom board. Because of a road

destructor mites that fall in there, somebody else said, well, they're dead anyway, so that doesn't do anything for it. No, they're not. They're alive. I video them. I pull those trays. I look at those little mites scooting around in there. So we want them to go through screens and stay down there. So that's all mite control. The reason I'm saying all of this, Okay, by not venting, we're also not helping the mites reproduce in winter when the brooding starts up again. High CO2 levels are something that occurs when you don't have a lot of top venting. Also, high humidity. These are things that Verroa's director mites do not like. They don't like super low humidity because they can desiccate.

They also don't like super high humidity because it makes it difficult for them. your bees can do fine in that high CO2 environment too so the bees control at all which reduces mite reproduction slab on there some veroxan and when they hit the dispersal phase what the heck is the dispersal phase anyway well that's when the mites are not protected by a pupa cap in the cell because these treatments exhalic acid vapor and exhalic acid dribble and exhalic acid extended release do not go through the cappings on the pupating, be it's workers or the drones, right? So we need extended release that at some moment

during that treatment period, the mites are going to be exposed and they're going to, in theory, die and end up in your screen bottom board in the tray that you're going to pull out that you're going to look at to validate the drop off. So it's really darn good. But you have to pick a method.

If you're hearing it from me, you have to follow the label, you have to pick a method. And the delivery method, I won't even name all the different ways that people want to give their bees exhalic acid. EZox is approved, apobioxal is approved. So for dribble, for vaporization, sublimation, we'll say both things there. And of course, there are extended release methods. Okay. So when you hear about other methods of delivering exhalic acid, if it's not a label that's been approved, that's not approved.

So rather than go down the list of all the different ways that people want you to deliver it, please stick with what's been tested and validated through scientific scrutiny. Moving on to question number two. This comes from Alberta First Podcast. That's interesting. Can you harvest honeycomb with a flow hive? And this is on a flow hive video that I posted.

It's been a couple of months. now my ninth year with the flow hive and so often this question comes up so i'm glad that this was asked because they think that you cannot get beeswax and comb honey for example out of it because you have mechanized plastic frames that you get your honey out of and then where would the wax come from well did you know by the way for those of you who don't want to spend fat stacks on a flow hive two plus super nuclear all the bells and whistles hive they have a hybrid hive that's much cheaper it only has three flow frames in it and the rest of the frames in the honey super are foundationless or have foundation or whatever you want to put in there so for those who want some honey

through the flow frames but they also want to have the ability to make comb honey or um to just be able to get beeswax then the hybrid is what I recommend and I would send you to my website which is the way to be.org which is also where you go to submit a question and there's a page mark the flow experience and there you can get $50 off of your purchase on the flow I website but you're not going to want to do that here's why they're offering bigger discounts just by going straight to the website without me so you don't need to do that you can get more right now for that but try the hybrid and i don't own one by the way and while i was looking at in response to this looking at that in response to this question i thought i need to get one of the

flow hybrid tops just so i can test it out i already know it's probably going to work well and i think the wood on that is a acuria acuria a coria something like that it's really fast-growing very light pine style almost cypress style wood there from australia so anyway that's it you can get cut comb and beeswax from flow hives and have the flow frames that work so well question number three comes from michel in michigan troy michigan actually if you can only if you can only buy one queen cage better be would it be the two frame or the one frame isolation or introduction cage which would you use the most often okay so I keep this here and behind me by the way those are queen introduction cages this is a queen isolation cage and as described

they come from better bee and so what's the difference let's talk about queen isolation versus queen introduction queen introduction means the bar spacing is so fine that even workers can't get through it so if you're introducing a queen you bought one through the mail you got one from a breeder you know you spent fat stacks because this is a very valuable queen and you don't want your bees to kill the queen you take a frame this is just for example This frames from 21st B, by the way. Anyway, you take a frame of capped brood or mostly capped brood. You put them in here, no workers, just the brood.

This is for queen introduction. You put your queen in here, turn her loose. You scoot this along the top so you don't smash the queen, and you cover her up. Now, the queen introduction cage, no other bees can get to them. So what happens is your queen gets fed through the bars by nurse bees in the hive through trophylaxis. They cannot get in and sting the queen to death.

So they either feed her or they don't, which they will, because I've never seen them not feed a queen in a cage like this. And they just can't bite onto her and sting her and kill her and pull her wings off and all the things that sometimes they seem to want to do, particularly if the beekeeper is messed up and still has a queen somewhere in the hive when they bring in this new queen. So this saves the queen. the capped workers that are in there they emerge from their cells and they

attend to the queen so they become her retinue right away how do they get their food and resources from other bees and the hive they continually feed them through the bars so the question is first of all queen introduction cage which is the tiny bars nothing gets through it or the queen isolation cage which means that the queen can't get through the bars which is what this is but workers can't they can pass through so they can do full attendance on the frames that can continue to build honeycomb and stuff like that and they can nourish when the queen starts laying eggs in there they can start taking care of the open larvae so then the

other part of that which one first of all would i prefer between the two of those introduction isolation if i can only buy one i'm going to ask for the queen isolation cage so it just holds the queen workers can pass through drones cannot pass through so it's also great for containing drones that you want to do mic counts on and things like that the next part is do i want the two frame system which is what this is this is deep they also make a medium or would i mostly use the single frame version so i would use the single frame version that's why this one sits down here this one sits uh here in my youtube studio because i almost never need it the others have been used a lot so the queen isolation cages are what i use when i'm trying to keep a swarm from going

somewhere for example so if i collected a swarm i find the queen i can put her in one of these stick her in there with a bunch of workers close it up without smashing the queen and guess what they're going to stay in the hive that i put her in until i feel like letting her go the advantage why would they even make a two frame system because now we can have over 6 000 bs in production in here more than that let's see it's about if you have deep frames in here that's about 3 000 bs per if they capped them all. So we got almost 12,000 bees in here. She stays in production for a much longer time.

And then you can also do controls, right? We can, you can do a Demery method almost with this. By isolating your queen, keeping control of where she lays eggs, and then you can start shuffling frames out here because they'll emerge, the workers come off of them, and now you've got a brood break out here. And then you can do all kinds of manipulation with it. The single frame takes up two frame spaces,

in your hive. The double frame system takes up three standard frame spaces in your hive. So single frame, deep version, queen isolation over introduction. That's my personal preference. You get them from BetterBee. They're going to be at the North American Honeybee Expo if you're going to be there. And I would recommend taking advantage of free shipping from anybody who's going to be at the Expo selling stuff. So that's it. That's what not only would I use it more often, that's what I do use more often. I have three queen isolation cages, single frame deeps out in the way to be academy building because that's where I go to grab stuff when I'm doing swarm control. And I don't have any swarm control going on right now because you saw the temps.

Everybody's buttoned up for winter. Question number four. This comes from Jerry from Dorchester, Illinois. I've been listening to as much information as I can to get a hold of how to have the greatest success overwintering in Illinois. I've heard from multiple sources that insulation is key and I know you always insulate hive tops. My confusion comes from the importance of bees entering the torpor state to reduce food consumption. Are we insulated? It says are we insulation, but I think insulating strictly to avoid condensation above the cluster? Or are we wanting the bees cold? Just not too cold. I currently have all my hives wrapped in reflect X and they have reflect X on top of the hive with two inch insulation on top of that. So this is from Jerry. So what's the purpose?

the purpose is to get your bees, first of all, out of the wind. That's number one. So well-fitting colonies of bees, right? So the way the hive goes together, there's no open joints, gaps, or leaks or things like that. Your bees have no idea what's headed their way weather-wise. There are locally adapted bees, and that's a good thing. Because bees respond to the environmental cues. So it's mostly nutritionally based, right? So when pollen and nectar start to dry up in the environment. They start to reduce brood inside the hive and they begin to cluster and save their resources for winter. That's also when they start robbing out other colonies because they have this big workforce. Anyway, what can we do as beekeepers? Now, the standard Langstroth hive has been around for a

very long time. The Langstroth hive came out and did not have insulation on it. So later on, quilt boxes came out, quilt boxes or thick boxes that sit on top of the hive, and people wanted to quilt their bees in. So create something that would be using wood chips or woolen or something like that and absorb moisture as it passes through the top of the hive and out through a little weephole, some tiny opening in the top of the hive so that they could vent off and keep moisture out in winter. Then later, insulation came along, modern insulation, like rigid foam board. and we also have cool stuff like reflect text which is described in this question reflect test is the foil-faced bubble wrap so there's also double bubbles so that's double airs of bubbles and foil face on both sides that prevents the movement of air wherever it gets placed so we no longer need wood shavings and things like that to absorb the moisture that rises through the top of the hive because we've encapsulated the top of the hive and stop all the air movement for the reasons that I've already described today. So when you put the I do

incremental changes, and I've described this before, but I'll do it again because we're in winter right now, and Jerry wants to know. So wrapping the hive with reflect tags. Here's my thinking on that. People have historically wrapped their hives with interesting things like roof felt. I want you to look up the material composition of roof felt, which by the way, know what it's for it goes on your roof underneath your shingles so that when you nail your shingles on your roof you have an additional barrier that prevents moisture from getting through your roof sheathing and it keeps your shingles from deteriorating and it also provides additional waterproofing when the nails go through it so it's really not designed to be on a beehive

So I would never personally recommend wrapping tar paper, but I understand the incentive to do it to prevent air from blowing through your hive. And since tar paper, again, that's roof felt used to be called tar paper. So I understand because they didn't have Tyvec and house wraps and things like that back then. And we have modern materials that we can wrap our hives with if we want to. So what Jerry's done is wrapped the double bun. or the reflect tags are around the hive too so I would do that if my bees were not already doing well in well-constructed three-quarter inch material hives this is key

with insulation on top and even the nucleus hives that are very small they're five frame deeps wooden hives I don't wrap any of them we also do have insulated hives here because what good is it to say one thing is okay and another thing's not or one things better or significantly better that word significantly is something that scientists use a lot they might say there's a difference there's a moderate difference no significant difference and so that's key so i have apame hives here i have layens hives here that are insulated i have a very thick-walled long langstroth hive here so we have insulated and uninsulated and until recently i had the lison hive here so we look then to see how they manage themselves going through winter, right? So what's the point of the insulation? To keep them

tightly clustered, as written here, should they be cold enough that they're in a state of torpor? Because remember, honeybees do not hibernate. They go into a state of torpor, which is just a lower metabolism rate, but they're aware and fully functioning, right? They're just not moving all around. So there is evidence that if you, for example, use like the Lycine or the BMAX hives or the hive IQ, all these heavily insulated polystyrene hives, which some people just call polyhives, they're so insulated that the bees are capable of worming the space, even though I understand that's not their intention. They're warming the cluster in winter, which is to keep themselves alive. The center of that cluster is where some of that winter brood is going to be, and the cluster is not static.

it moves through the hive. If it's a langstroth with boxes, it moves up. And if it's a horizontal hive, they're gradually moving horizontally through and over, under, and around the frames there, and getting onto the honey. So there is evidence that the well-insulated hives have more movement. In other words, the cluster is a little looser.

There's a little more movement in there. And some people have reported that the heavily insulated hives generate far more condensation than some of the uninsulated hives do. But my only test for this, coming out of winter every year, is looking at the clusters, seeing where they are, seeing how much consumption there is. When you get a hive kit, there's no recommendation for insulation. If it's a standard Langstroth hive kit, you'll have usually two deep boxes in it, two medium boxes, a brand new beekeeper will often put all of that together all at once put one colony of bees in it and expect them to fill it up

there's an uninsulated inner cover and there's a telescoping outer cover with very thin material over the top and it's usually clad with aluminum or tin or something like that no insulation with that setup it also has the inner cover pre-notched because you're going to have to vent through that top And that's because it's just as cold as it is outside on that cover. Worse than that, when I started doing thermal scans of those hives in the summertime, 135 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface of that. So now, and the bees manage it. See, that's the problem.

Bees manage it. But it takes a lot of effort. They have to do a lot of cooling, a lot of bringing in of water, so they can spread the water around and fan it to cool the hive, and they have to cool it a lot. We save them that effort by adding. insulation by shutting off that vent that's in the top of those hives by sizing the hive correctly for the population inside of it so for a brand new swarm of bees it's in a hive you wouldn't have

two deeps two mediums inner cover outer cover and expect them to do well we want them to have enough resources to get through winter and when i put insulated inner covers i built feeder shims for my hives i thought that was a great thing to do and right after that be smart designs came out with their insulated intercover and i shifted to that and that alone cut the consumption of winter food in half instead of 74 to 80 90 pounds of honey to get a full-size mature colony through winter i could get them through on 35 pounds of honey so just the insulated intercover alone now should i do more insulation than that well that's a question what do you want out of your bees what do you need them to be able to do. And there's this question about whether bees suffer from the cold.

Do they suffer from the cold? Are they doing okay? And then other people say, I don't want my bees to survive. I want them to be thriving. And you need these big numbers in spring. Do you though? Because here's what happens. My insulated hives and my non-insulated hives, although they all have insulated covers, the only one out there without an insulated cover right now is the top bar hive. but it has thick wooden slats top bars on it so anyway in spring their numbers are strong their reproduction is strong and they start foraging and they swarm right on cue unless you do something about it managing them so in my mind as a backyard beekeeper which most of you are do i need greater numbers in spring if i were somebody who had to be hired out if i wanted

to sell pollination services to local apple orchards and things like that, I need higher numbers of bees. As a backyard beekeeper, I don't. In fact, I want them healthy, but I want them small. So what I'm trying to do here in the state of Pennsylvania is how my colonies nice and strong coming into spring, not bubbling over number-wise from the hives that are in, and I still have troubles controlling their numbers. This is the same. whether the hives are insulated around the sides or not so in other words the lands hives are performing the same as my standard lengths the long langstroth hive performs the same as you know the vertical hives that are even the for

example the appamah hives which are insulated I like appame hives because they're so well configured with all kinds of options no painting no preservation stuff like that a lot of advantages to that But as far as the numbers go, and the health, overall health of the bees, I don't see a significant difference in those hives that are insulated on the side walls or not just well fit. That is important. If your hives are coming apart and there's gaps and airflow and things like that, when these winds pick up, that makes a difference. The insulation itself does not make a significant difference in my climate.

you want to talk to somebody who's doing things in extreme temperatures people that live in the far north people that live in the Klondike like Etchen Tardif they need heavy insulation on the side walls too or their bees would die here where I am not so much so you need to evaluate where you live and what's important here's what I don't like I don't want to have to pull off a bunch of insulation and put it in storage through the summer so whatever levels of insulation we have on our hives here it remains the same year-round because they need protection from summer heat just as much as they need protection from the winter cold and that's why through the years by testing

out these different parameters making incremental changes adding little insulation properties to your hives and then seeing how they work out through all the seasons you'll find out because a well-insulated hive by the way also makes it easier on your bees midsummer when they're trying to keep things cool it works both ways question number five comes from la sancho 46 so i see here that it's lisa sancho it says i can't believe i miss you when you were in fort Wayne indiana had a good time down at fort Wayne indiana by the way nice drive says i'm a new beekeeper i don't know where to look for location etc anyway my question i have fonded on but based on what you said here i may have done it

wrong i have fondant packs directly on the frames i have a deep and a medium on now on top of the frames the fondant i have a feeder shim so feeder shim is just a little usually inch and a half or two inch frame that goes around right on top of your top box and make space for you to put your fondant packs right uh on the frames if you want them there and uh then so anyway it's on top of the frames of the fondant i have a feeder shim a b smart inner insulated cover with three layers of reflectex in the outer lid you said to put insulation on first then the fondant then more insulation is that correct trying to keep my bees warm this winter has me concerned I'm not doing enough so here's the thing and

this is a concern for a lot of new beekeepers that are trying to get through their first winter if you read the packet on the fondant it probably says it directly on the frames and that would be the most efficient way for your bees to access the fondant so if you had a fondant pack let's say that's what this is and let's say we cut the little hole in it and we open our hive up and we put a feeder shim around the top frames and we put this right on there now the shim is around it so you don't smash it down your inner cover goes here and then insulation outer cover and so on that's fine that's efficient for your bees but here's what I did I had the

insulated inner cover on which is where it always is already direct landtop because remember the bees have sealed with propolis all around I don't like personally making configuration changes just for winter because often you make those changes at the end of the year when it's really cold and your bees can't propylize and seal things up the way they can when it's warm so often people are making changes of putting quilt boxes on and all these other things that are new to the hive new to the bees just because the weather is changing i don't do that therefore there's no feeder shim like that there there is the inner cover the feeder shim is above that insulated intercover and it's constant it's always there

i don't store it i don't change it i don't shift it out insulated intercover this goes on top of that there's that central hole in the B-smart designs insulated in your cover. The Apamea feeders also stay constant year-round and the bees will propylize up all those little vent holes on those and you can put your fondant in those and then shift to spring. If you need to, you can put sugar syrup in the same feeder space. That's why I do that. It doesn't change year round and, again, through the years,

my bees have demonstrated that they come through that little hole and they access the fondant up in the insulate. space just fine well away from the top bars of the top box of your beehive so this also makes it easier for me to just pull it out and put another one on and close it right back up if they're on the top bars now if I want to even check on it just for a moment I have to pull the outer cover off all the insulation out inner cover off see this in the feeder sham and if it's all good then i did all that for nothing close it right back up and you're good to go but i saved myself those steps by having this on the insulated inner cover and the only exposure to the bees is that little hole that

rises through the center of that insulated intercover by be smart designs which for me right now is still my favorite insulated intercover design out there you have to put your own shim above and around that so that works for me and now you didn't do it wrong if you've already got them down on your frames themselves that is the most efficient for the bees are in direct contact with it but let me go back to that word significant I did not see a significant change in the survivability of the colonies in the activity of the colony and in the consumption rate of those colonies based on whether it was put under the inner cover or on top of an insulated intercover surrounded by additional insulation so that still works that's what I'm doing now

and it saves me steps. Don't have to get down in there, and the bees are not as upset. When you pull off that whole hive, even for a moment, you rile the entire colony in the middle of winter. Now, that may not be bad for you. You may not mind,

but I just like to check it quick and move on. So what grandchildren are good for too, now that they're both, we have two grandsons that are 10. We can assign them these jobs together. Moving on to question number six. This comes from Ryan Orr, 5893 that's a YouTube channel name says I know this is an old post we're looking at the

video that I did showing wood preservation for your beehive components was something called eco wood E-C-O-Tag W-O-O-D says I've got flow hive 2 plus and looking at using this on it is this still holding up for you does this work for the roof also or should it be painted after using this treatment and that word treatment that's exactly what it is so as a treatment that preserves the wood the flow hive that he's describing here the two plus that's a cedar hive already so in theory it doesn't even require any treatment at all i like to do it so i put the eco wood treatment on by the way get the version that has no dyes if you don't know what i'm talking about i'm going to put it down in the video

description there'll be a link there free to go check it out all the home centers carry it Amazon carries it eco wood treatment so what it does not do it does not prevent your wood from cracking a little bit it does not stop wood from warping if it's got high moisture and it's not good wood to begin with with a flow hive lumber as true and straight as that stuff is it is great for that including the flow hive classic which is pine hoop pine is what they came out with it's all good for all of that now this is not on the level for example if you're looking for a really fantastic treatment endora hive treatments it just made me think of that Greg burns there in ohio nature's image farm they sell that uh indoor hive treatment anyway eco wood is going to prevent

rot so i've not had any boxes i've treated with eco wood rot out most of them are very stable so what i've done is i make sure and glue all the joints and the trickiest joint of all the joints in your b boxes that little thin rabbit joint up in the corner where the box comes together that seems to warp out or cup or do something messed up more than any other part of the hive so screw your hive boxes together and glue them together with something really good like type on three or gorilla glue ultimate wood glue which is waterproof by the way so it works great I like it now for the roof the roofs on flow hives are pretty thin they're the gabled roofs I highly recommend painting those I have them both ways I let them go

both ways but I do notice there's more movement in the unpainted versions so if you want to maintain watertight integrity and all that stuff exterior semi-gloss latex paint highly recommended for the roof part the rest of the box probably going to last the rest of my life anyway so that's it for question six and it comes in five-gallon packets so the packet is you mix it with water and those are royal gallons or something so it's more than actual the american five-gallon measurement so whatever that is question number seven comes from nori from toulouse france i have a layens hive and i wondered if i could put fondin onto a frame of foundation to feed the colony in winter is there is no option for above frame feeding

says i live in the south of france i am scottish where the temp in winter can go below freezing quite frequently okay so that is actually we have layens hive people here in the United States as well and that was my opening thumbnail today is for this particular mechanism right here I want to show you two different things one is if you want to do fondant the layens hives the layens frames are different just for example that's a layens frame see how deep it is this particular one has a wax foundation and this comes from dr. Leo Shirashkin at horizontal horizontal bees.com or no or not horizontal bees horizontal hive.com

Leo Shirashkin anyway he sells a frame feeder just like this so that sits in here and then this little piece of wood that goes over the top so then it matches up because the way the lanes frames are all of these top bars of their frames come together and there's no air gap in between them which means that feeding them is not something that you can do easily so if you have this frame feeder this comes i bought this from dr leo nothing from him was given to me by the way so this is not an endorsement uh but he offers a frame feeder that's compartmentalized in here you could put your fond in these and of course stick that in there but you don't have that let's say in France so this question comes into play for the top our hives too and that's what this is for

now this is not designed for fondant this is designed for if we're doing a cutout or something or we've got some wonky comb you can take the honeycomb and push it right onto these pegs and start a top bar with the comb from a cutout cap prude whatever you want and in it goes this just happens to also work for a single packet of fondant which you can just trim the top a little bit but then you'll stick these bars right through the top of the fondant it goes all the way through this is a 2.4 pound pack 2 pounds 4 ounces and you put that on there and then you cut your little hole in the top up here and let your bees just feed on it so this would work for feeding for top bars and it would also work if you just had a top bar shaped the

right size for your lay-ins hive also you could do that and this particular little gripper comes from B-B-E-E-M-F-U-L-com and that's where this comes from. So I can see a lot of uses for that. It doesn't even take up the full width of the bar, and it is very rigid, very tough stuff. So that's what I recommend for that. Now, let's see you don't want to do any of that. Then we're back into the Land's Hive situation, where the frames are unique.

And because all the frames come together, some people just go to the last couple of frames. So broods down here, combination of brood and bee bread and resources. Then we have capped honey, cap-honey, cap-honey. Then you come to the end of the capped honey. Some people just open that gap a little bit, just enough for your bees to come through. They lay the fondant right on top of that little open gap,

and then they insulate heavily directly over the top. and if you use something like double bubble reflect text however you want to say it if that overlays the top of that then the bees don't just move up and out plus they don't lose all that control of the microclimate inside the space of the land's hive which ours from dr leo are insulated with lamb's wool or sheep's wool and so those are a few different ideas for how you might feed fondant that way and that works is one of the things that actually I know a lot of people love the lands hives but they have all lands hives and this compatibility of frames is a big source of frustration for me because when I need to fortify one colony or another

I can't you know pull a lands frames to get in a langstroth and and vice versa you can't go back and forth so you kind of pick your path when you want the lands or the langstroth and for me personally even though I have both my preference for a horizontal hive is the long langstroth And we're going through our first winter with top our hives too. And I definitely see the appeal of the simplicity of a topar hive. The layens hives, they're just much bigger, much deeper, and a little more challenging to work with for me personally. Question number eight comes from Matt Smithland.

That's the YouTube channel name. It says, does using black foundation make any difference? And this is on a video about the Long Langstroth Hive. And the question is about the different colors of foundation. Do you think it should make a difference? Because here's the thing. I also was walking around at a expo setup and someone was showing the frames

that the bees take to most, they said, because of the color of the frame. It was a yellow-colored frame. Now, if they were sitting out in the bee yard, I think yellow colors definitely get the attention. attention of bees pretty quick and they might check things out inside the hive so my question for them was what's compositionally different about the different colored frames inside the hive and they said nothing so materially they're identical what about the

bees wax that they put on them are there differences in the bees wax no they're identical well therefore inside the hive it won't make any difference at all to your bees because it's dark in there and they don't see the colors so it makes absolutely no difference the color of the foundation that you're using inside your hive uh now it can make a difference for the beekeeper not the bees so the bees don't show a preference one way or the other uh what does make a difference is to you when you're looking at the frames i like black foundation brood frames in particular and that's because it helps me see the eggs quicker i can see the larvae quicker and things like that it gives me a nice contrast when i'm looking at it i also just don't like the

look of white plastic i don't know why it doesn't look natural to me and so because that's it you know kind of the appeal if it's golden like honey colored like this plastic here uh that might be appealing to the beekeeper but as far as the bees themselves are concerned zero difference because they can't visually choose what they're working on so that's it for that and guess what that's the last question for today so we're down to the plan of the week number one on your list for backyard beekeepers should be to first of all find out if your bees still have enough resources where are they located if you have thermal scans if you're you know kind of a natural beekeeper you don't want a bunch

of technology you can just go put your ear up against your hive and listen to see where they're at knocking on hives people do that and stuff it does where wake them up. By the way, you can be stung in cold weather. They will fly out and commit suicide to sting you because that's just what they do. Anyway, clean the entrances. Remember snow banked up against the hive, no big deal. Entrances, please have an opening. Mouse guards. If your entrances are large, it's time to have your mouse cards on. If you haven't done it already, hopefully this is redundant information and we're just reminding you of things that you've, I'm sure, already done. If your entrance is three,

of an inch high then you don't need a mouse guard you're okay cover holes and leaks as I mentioned before and this year I started using that aluminumized tape which is this stuff HVAC tape I have these rolls out in our B kits and it's extreme weather tape which means you know you're walking around there's a big storm coming or something like that you can't align your boxes and you see there's a little gap in there that you didn't notice before the light's just right and it's passing through your hive wrap those joints with aluminumized tape you can't because some people like to fill gaps and stuff with propolis and bees wax and stuff like it's too late for that's too cold so it's not going to work and that tape is holding its own everywhere that I've put it so it works fantastic the other thing is you find a hide that's misaligned for some reason if you have a bar clamp You can if you know lower boxes here next box up is shifted off to the side a little bit and it's almost opening a gap over here because of that You put the bar clamp high over here low over here and you draw it into alignment nice and slow Your Problosil is already disrupted

So that is the easiest way you're not lifting anything. You're just moving it all together You can move a whole stack that way even if it's the bottom box the way it sits on your landing board or something like that You can shift them gradually with a really good bar clamp the screw type not the grip pistol grip type so cover holes and leaks clear your trays always pull and inspect and see what's going on you won't probably find a lot of detritus down in your trays in your enclosed screen bottom boards now my only regret is that every hive i have does not have an enclosed screen bottom board right now even my observation hives i have purchased i have removable inserts under my observation hives, which all have screen bottoms.

But now I'm going to bump those up, so it's my project for next spring, and I'm going to have a nice deep space in there, so the screen will be up here. And I have sandwich trays, or hors d'oeuvres, or whatever they're called, that they sell on Amazon, it's for food. But they happen to fit perfectly, and some of them are compartmentalized for, you know, carrots and whatever people snack on crackers. So you slide those trays in there. they're heavy-duty plastic their food grade not that that matters because nothing the bees aren't

going to touch it at all but it's where you get to go to find your varroa mites and stuff like that removable tray deeper bottom every beehive if i were to tell you one thing if you're building a beehive right now and you're looking at what kind of bottom board to set up it is a easy choice for me after all of these years screened bottom board completely enclosed so there's no free airflow through there and a removable inserted tray that you can use to inspect and look for mite drops and stuff like that the mites have a very difficult time you can also slick the sides of it with um i have something called micro mist but that's an industrial um spray that makes your surface super slippery it's like dirt and stuff won't even stick to it so mites

definitely can't climb it. Mites are not as capable as you think. If they have a very smooth surface, they have a hard time climbing it. So live mites that fall through the screen that are groomed off by your bees, stay down there. And so that's what you want. The other thing is you've got battery devices. We've got thermal scanners. You might have the Apisolus Vap systems. You might have the everything BVAC and power stations that we can carry with us. These are self-contained units like the DeWalt Power Station and stuff like that. Charge them up. Don't wait to the last minute.

The worst thing for you is you go to use one and it's completely dead, like zeroed out. DeWalt batteries are terrible, for example. You can lose a very expensive large DeWalt battery just by letting it go to 100% zero. So we want to keep some charge in all of your battery equipment. That's it for today. So I want to thank you for being here. if you want to submit a topic or a question that you have for a future session here please go to the way to be.org click on the page mark contact fill out the form

and send me what you're thinking what you want to know about and i'll do my best to get you the best current information that there is i'm frederick done this has been the way to be and i hope you have a fantastic weekend you and your honeybees I don't know.